From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman, and this is Good Food.

I was a foreign correspondent based in West Africa for seven years.

Then I covered ISIS and Al-Qaeda, which took me to Mosul in Iraq and to Syria.

I've seen again and again how the objects that people choose to keep with them and surround

themselves with are such a statement about what we value, about what is important to us.

What would you take with you? It became a hypothetical for many of us during the initial shock of the ferocities of the wildfires,

but for others it was their worst nightmare. Some people were given notice to hastily pack a few things,

while others weren't given the luxury of time or didn't even consider that they wouldn't be

returning home fairly quickly.

A picture on Instagram resurfaced from a former natural disaster.

It was a set of China carefully stacked underwater on the steps of a swimming pool.

It made me appreciate from a different point of view, the story of Ashley Dume Along. Her story is featured in the New York Times in a piece by Rukmini Kalimaki. Ashley has the china of her great,

great-grandmother, and Rukmini questions how it's made it this far. Hi, Rukmini. Hi, Evan. Thank you for having me. Before we get to Ashley's story,

first tell us what is China and why is it called that? So China is basically a form of porcelain

that like its name was invented in China and then it made its way to Europe. And as far back as the,

the, let's see, the 1600s and the 1700s, the noble classes in Europe increasingly showed

an interest in eating off of their own dish. It used to be that eating was very much this communal thing that was

done out of troughs. And as recently as the 1800s in America, Americans were still eating this

way. So imagine a large wooden bowl like you would have a salad in with everybody eating with their hands out of it or

with a single spoon. And among the innovations of the industrial revolution was the thought

that each person should have their own setting. One historian described it as the beginning

of the one man, one spoon movement.

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